I don’t want to give you visions of your 5th grade math teacher right now, but when it comes to your search engine optimization (SEO) strategy, you have to check your work. You have to validate your SEO strategy because time passes. Your digital presence evolves, the market evolves, and your content changes to reflect all of this. You can’t possibly keep track of every title, tag, keyword, and link you’ve used in the past. But… you’ve got to. Sooner or later, you’re going to repeat yourself. Eventually, links are going to fail. At some point, your keywords will lose relevance and you’ll distance yourself from your target audience. So, let’s get a jump on things and work to validate your SEO strategy before the list piles up too high. 

Validating Your SEO Strategy: Know Your Competition

Choosing keywords that align with customer search patterns and set you apart from your competition is a balancing act. You want your keywords to be unique but not unique to the point that it’s unlikely potential customers would use them. So, you must look to your competitors if you want to validate your keyword use so that you are carving out some ‘’white space’’ in the industry for yourself. 

The Google Keywords Tool can help you strike the right balance between popular and overused keywords. Paid tools such as Mangools and SEMrush help you work your way through identifying keywords used by your competition and popular keywords consumers are using. Armed with this information, you can bolster your SEO by crafting original but market-oriented keywords.

Even if you’re already mindful of your keywords, this validation should not be a one-and-done effort. Revisit and refine your keyword strategy often to maintain a strong SEO game. If your competitor does a rebrand and starts using some of your keywords, pay attention! You may need to modify yours, or create more intentionally keyworded content/posts.

Validating Your SEO Strategy: Know Your Target Audience 

Make sure you are super clear about who your customer avatars are – who EXACTLY is your ‘’sweet spot customer’’? How do they speak, and what do they search for? That is the context by which you develop your own list of keywords.

While sweating the small stuff is important, all of the keyword refining in the world is not going to set your SEO strategy straight if you’re not operating with a strong grasp of who your target audience is – and what they want. Why is this step so important?  Ideally, you’ll want to do keyword research based on what the audience wants, not solely on what content the site already has.

Maybe you spent a lot of time thinking about your target audience from the start… maybe not. If you feel confident that you have, take a moment to step back. Consider whether your target audience has changed or grown with your business. If you skipped the question altogether in the past, now is the time to define your target audience before you move forward in SEO strategy validation. For those of you who know your target audiences, but lack a strong grasp of their needs, use their “pain points” in your keyword research. This can be found in the form of an industry trade association blog/website, industry research, competitors’ content, and a little help from your AI tools.

A strong SEO strategy starts and ends with a clear vision of your competition and your target audience. You need to keep both in mind as you proceed. If you are still perplexed, give OnDemandCMO a call.